Stop That Truck!
by Lucillia
Summary: Little Harry Potter encounters the Winter Soldier under what were quite possibly the most ludicrous circumstances possible during the Winter Soldier's Summer from Hell. A Summer from Hell that Harry might've been indirectly responsible for...


**Surrey, Little Whinging, The Roof of Mrs. Figg's House, Summer 1986:**

It had been supposed to be a simple mission. Kill some idiot who'd cheated Hydra on a drill deal, and that was it. No nation toppling. No evading crack security teams or special forces. No security whatsoever. Just some fat slob who made life in the office miserable for everyone else who would probably all shout "Hail Hydra!" if they ever found out who had taken the fat bastard out once the mission was over.

Usually, such a mission was easier done than said, but the two low-level Hydra agents who'd been sent to off Dursley had died under the most unusual circumstances while the target was left standing. Then, the agents sent in after them had died...

Finally, after losing a dozen low and mid-level agents and one of their best, Hydra decided to send in the Asset. The soldier they usually saved for assassinations of the highest sort, the soldier who was meant for missions of the greatest difficulty such as toppling governments was being sent in to off an obese loud-mouthed executive of a drill company.

Strangely, despite the fact that he'd been given the best equipment for this assignment, The Winter Soldier had found killing Vernon Dursley to be completely impossible. Every time he'd come close to getting a clean shot, he'd found himself dodging some bizarre near-death experience such as the accident with the tree which made him long for his after-mission memory wipe. That poor poor tree, that poor poor rat, that rather unfortunate pedestrian, that poor poor lorry driver, and that poor poor old man who may or may not have been a Nazi war criminal who had evaded justice until the runaway septic tank draining truck that had nearly crushed the Winter Soldier who had just dislodged himself from the fallen tree in the nick of time had...

Each near-miss that resulted in a near fatality made the Winter Soldier more determined to deal with the target and possibly prolong the target's suffering if he could find a reasonable way of doing so. It was getting to the point where it was becoming personal for a man for whom it was never personal.

As the Winter Soldier was yet again lining up a shot aimed at the driver of a certain car that was making its way to Privet Drive, trying to get a cat that belonged to the owner of the house whose roof he was lying on off his leg without anyone noticing, someone back at base broke radio silence in order to inform him that the mission was being postponed until August 1997 for some strange reason.

Though he wasn't a hundred percent certain, he could've sworn he'd heard someone mutter "Fucking wizards" in the background as he was given orders to find transportation and return posthaste.

Secrecy no-longer as much of an issue now that the mission had _temporarily_ been scrubbed, the Winter Soldier gave his leg a firm shake to dislodge the cat that had decided to make it its home, inadvertantly knocked a number of poorly tended roof shingles loose in the process, and found himself sliding off of the roof and into the rosebushes that had been planted next to the house of one Arabella Figg.

Finding transportation in the suburbs wasn't all that much of an issue. Finding transportation on the sly without any of the local busybodies spotting him, taking it, and making a clean getaway in said transport however...

After disentangling himself from Mrs. Figg's rosebushes and slinking through Mrs. Figg's back garden, hauling himself over her back fence, making his way through the adjoining back garden of Mrs. Figg's neighbor, heaving himself over the fence that abutted an alley and slinking through several alleyways as silent as a cat, the Winter Soldier lucked out for the first time on this mission and found a vehicle standing unattended with the engine running.

While this theft was lucky for the Winter Soldier who was favoring expedience over inconspicuousness due to the injuries he'd sustained falling off of Mrs. Figg's house and into her rosebushes in addition to his prior injuries, it was also quite fortunate for the owner of the vehicle as well, seeing as the insurance payment on the vehicle which would later be found on fire on the Southhampton docks would solve certain financial woes.

Two years earlier, one of the denizens of Little Whinging had visited America and had the opportunity of witnessing an ice cream truck roll by. Why he had never before seen one in his native Britain was a mystery. Listening to the god-awful music and watching dozens of children chase after the mobile ice cream vendor under the bright Summer sun, the man believed he'd hit upon a surefire way of making money hand-over-fist. Investing in his own ice cream truck the minute he'd gotten home, the man soon discovered that Britain's summers, especially this one, were not very conducive to making a profit, which was why most ice cream truck owners fiercely fought over territory.

Frankly, the only reason the owner of Little Whinging's one and only ice cream truck which was currently speeding down Wisteria Walk with the Winter Soldier behind the wheel hadn't gone bankrupt was his best customer, one Dudley Dursley, who was wont to flag him down regardless of the weather and whose parents were always willing to provide their morbidly obese son with sweets.

 **Privet Drive:**

There were only two things in the world that would make Dudley Dursley run. One was his cousin whom he frequently chased after, and the other was the ice cream truck. Unfortunately, Dudley had bruised his backside earlier that day during a fall on the playground and was in the process of milking the injury for all it was worth when he'd heard the dulcet sounds of the ice cream truck approaching Privet Drive at a much faster speed than usual.

This had of course created a delimma for the boy. If he ran after the ice cream truck, his mother wouldn't fuss over him for the rest of the evening and wouldn't give him double helpings of dessert. If he ran after the truck though, he would have ice cream now rather than two servings of cake later.

After a long moment of thought, Dudley came up with what for him was an utterly brilliant solution to his dilemma. He decided to make his freak cousin go through all of the trouble of chasing down the ice cream truck.

Grabbing some money and shoving it in the face of his freak cousin who was hoovering the sitting room with a vaccuum cleaner that was nearly as big as he was, Dudley ordered the boy to chase down the truck and get him some ice cream. Vernon, who had just arrived in the door, backed up that order with a number of dire threats of what would happen to the freak should he fail to return with Dudley's ice cream.

Rapidly paling because the threats were worse than the usual and because Vernon looked to be in a bad enough mood to actually carry them out rather than bluster about them and limit himself to simply not feeding the freak supper, or breakfast, the Freak raced to comply.

 **On the other end of Privet Drive:**

Making his way out of the neighborhood that had become a memory the Winter Soldier would happily have scrambled with vague plans of heading to Southhampton, said Winter Soldier was frantically trying to find the switch to shut off the music that was being emmitted from the speakers that were attached to the brightly painted and heavily modified van that served as Little Whinging's one and only ice cream truck.

It was as the music came to a blessed halt that a childish cry of "Wait!" echoed in the silence of the cloud-covered suburban hellhole that the Winter Soldier was driving out of at a fair clip. Looking in the side mirror, he found himself looking back at a small bespectacled child with what looked like a dead animal growing out of his head running after him at a speed he'd be hard pressed to match.

As he sped up with the intention of leaving the distraction that was waving money in his small fist behind, he found himself being surprised by the fact that the small boy was doing the impossible and gaining on him.

The chase, despite the impossibility of it all, continued after Little Whinging had started becoming a distant memory and started attracting atttention as it did so. Especially after he had turned onto the A34 and the boy had still followed him. Knowing he couldn't turn a gun on the child with so much attention directed their way, he cast about for something with which to stop the chase before it continued for very much longer. His eyes landed on the refrigeration unit which contained that which the exceedingly perseverant child was after.

Taking his eyes off the road long enough to pop open the nearby freezer, he grabbed several items from it, turned back to the task of driving long enough to right the course of the ice cream truck that was veering dangerously across the next lane and on course to the grass median strip that separated it from oncoming traffic, and then flung the frozen treats out the window in the direction of the boy.

 **On the A34, Going God Only Knew How Fast As A Certain Someone Had Topped Out the Speedometer:**

Little Harry had absolutely no idea how fast he was running. All he knew was that he needed to catch up to the ice cream truck that always seemed to be slipping further and further away from him and get Dudley's ice cream. Uncle Vernon had threatened to really give him a beating this time if he didn't get Dudley's ice cream, and he'd looked mad enough that he'd actually do it.

Eventually, Harry had gotten close enough to the truck that he could actually see the driver in the side mirror. The driver who looked like one of those drug addicts that his uncle had been going on about recently. The driver who had seemingly ignored him before the reflection of a pair of cold, blank, ice blue eyes met his own.

Those chilling blue eyes that were empty of all but a vague sense of frustration gave Harry pause, sending a chill down his spine and stopping him in his tracks.

Seemingly an instant later, in an act that appeared to completely defy physics, an ice lolly struck little Harry in the head and knocked him onto the median strip that separated oncoming and outbound traffic an instant before a family of four who were on Holiday would've run him over.

 **30 Years Later:**

Harry had had the television that he'd pretty much only gotten because he'd sworn to himself that when he was grown up he'd get a television that was bigger and better than any the Dursleys had on Mute when the news came on due to the fact that he was more occupied with helping Albus Severus build a model tank. As the television was on Mute, he didn't know what the news story was about. He recognized the face on the screen though. He didn't think he would ever forget that face.

"That's the bastard from the ice cream truck!" Harry exclaimed as the picture of James Buchanan Barnes aka the Winter Soldier once again flashed on the screen.


End file.
